less than zero

My heart races not in the gallop of gallows but the quick-pat smatters of a child's feet on linoleum. I am free of zoloft: free of repressions, subconscious and chemical changes that carve away at my personhood, free of minimalized orgasms and the creeping vine of subclinical fatigue- free of my combat fatigues. Free also of constancy, of the working control panel of my emotional mind, the tiny receptors and inceptors of neuron and chemical that create the patina of my days, free of the pause button before the avalanche of thought and emotion, free of nights without floating anxiety before my eyes like small motes of decay in the retina.

I am free to know I did the best I could for Ever. Free to worry that a snappish tongue and sandpapered voice is hurting Lola. Free to adore my husband for his quiet shepherding of my volatile moments. Free to examine again, each one an object in the curio, the collection of my fears.

Unnatural grieving- there is such a thing, labeled and written in the books. The kind of grief I know I will experience if X happens, or Mr. Curry dies younger than I expect. Grief like this has the hallmark of a person who loses someone essential to their sense of safety and sense in the world. Yes, my children are essential. Yes, my husband is essential. Perhaps an hard rock childhood throws your balance for a lifetime, making you vulnerable to these kinds of necessities. When I am on a walk and the leaves are skittering in their snaky voices and the wind is blowing and the sky opens and the light dims, I am filled not only with joy but with the deep knowledge and comfort that my husband exists in this and is my companion in our understanding of these leaves, this wind, this light. We look at the world apart but when our eyes meet we are understanding each other in a way that I have never known with any other person in my life. How is it that I would ' grieve normally ' if that were taken away from me? I fear it.

Sleepless in Seattle has the sheen of bull all over it, but the truth it contains resonates with me past the fighting and days or weeks of pain and distance that will take time from most married couples, the disagreements, the profound disappointments, the irritations that chip away at the important. What it got so right was the sense of homecoming. That is my place with Mr. Curry. I suppose that it is a similar feeling believers have with God, but in a very mortal and tangible expression.

What struck me so deeply with Inception was the loss of home that occurred simultaneously with the death of the wife. A fitting metaphor: extradition. Removal from your home. Flight into fantasy, dreamworlds, unsure of reality.

I have been more unsure of reality than most people I come across who seem snugly rooted in the absolute truths of time, birth, death, objects, body. My mind, which often had to leave in escape during childhood, has always felt tethered reluctantly to the egg of my skull. Loving and being loved by Mr. Curry gives me the comfort of earthly grounding because he sees me so clearly. I am seen. I am here.

This is why daily I am so aware of seeing those who are often left alone. The elderly treated in deference but often as strange half human half angelic creatures, not quite alive or dead, but waiting. To meet the eye of a person is a simple thing. A profound thing. Teenagers, too, often left as amusing and strange creatures from another species, especially those who are different- the emos, the true geeks, the socially bizarre, the heshens, sluts, the painfully shy or pierced.

Without zoloft I have to remind myself every hour, every half hour, to breathe, to watch the tide of emotion as it swells, breaks and recedes in the same pattern as birthing contractions. Go with it. Where else will I go? To escape is the human impulse. To go with it is the only way through to the other side. I breathe, I try to keep my mouth shut, to smile at my children, to temper every over reaction and childish fit of frustration with the adult mind that is still there but overshadowed. I remind myself how lucky I am, that in another time I would have gone my whole life without this drug, and who knows what I would have become, after therapy and yoga and nutrition and breathe were simply not enough to balance what was so horribly electrified in my youth, through circumstance and a long legacy of brilliant but imbalanced minds.

Less than zero- to go to the end point of the ray and bend over, fingers gripping the edge of the sidewalk, peer into the complete unknown and uncontrolled. To fall into. To let go. To emerge through the nothingness into something new. To tesseract.

xo
maggie may